phallogocentricism

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Giongerly treading down the theoryed garden path I wonder if focusing too much on 
Oedipa in the mirror/motel scene misses something.  First, I always took it as a play on 
ALICE in WONDERLAND. a kind of a postmodern way to go *through* the looking glass.  
This scene is the real entrance  of Oedipa into the altered reality of the novel; but more 
importantly, maybe, we shouldn't overlook the fact that Metzger is also going through a 
real flip out--inverted oedipal castration anxiety (cashiered) the law, the father, betrayal, 
the split self: the whole nine yards contained in the image of himself watching Baby Igor, 
himself, through the looking glass TV screen, in that submarine.
john m


>Quizzical Heikki asks puckishly "and why do I always forget to take my
>Finnish-English dictionary into this computer lab with me anyway?"
>
>Simple, my dear lad.  Anxiety about entrance into the symbolic!  In
>exchange for mastery the nascent subject submits to the violence of the
>sign, sacrificing the pleasure of the mother's body for the (illusion) of
>control offered under the Law. (Here complicated by your need to move
>between "mother" tongue and Other English).  The price, perhaps too dear,
>prevents our Oedipa from completely entering the realm of the
>law-of-the-father either, hence her fascination with mirrors.  Inability
>to cathect with the agape of an Imaginary loving Third party, she caroms
>back and forth between complete subversion of her own identity in an other
>(Arnold Snarb e.g.) and the desire for phallogocentric mastery as promised
>by comprehension of the Word (see our list's recent fascination
>with/fetishization of same). Conflict synthesized?  Hardly.  See the
>famously ambiguous ending.  So you're in good company dear Heikki.
>
>And happy Valentines Day to all loving and unloved (that would be you mr.
>hate at atheist) p-listers everywhere!
>
>Diana
>
>